Right now I'm in Ifakara, Tanzania, visiting my friend Christina and taking photos for a drinking water and sanitation non-profit called msabi. Between shooting photos and video we've been checking out the town and landscape in Tanzania, here are some photos from a mid-week camping trip to the nearby river.  

A small set of photos from back in La Lucia estuary with Paulo and Rebecca, doing a bit of night fishing and photographing on the pier. Thanks again Paulo!! 

These are the photographs of the housing photos from Cato Manor, in Durban, South Africa. There is a post with more photos of the people in this neighborhood, whose name literally means "poor." Some of these photos were taken to be used in an effort to modify the design of the houses being built. While the project is being funded and slowly completed, the poor housing design is inefficiently using money and fails to provide basic water and sanitation needs for a large community. While new houses look nice and may be impressive at first glance to a village in complete poverty, the poor design and deficiencies inherent in the project will lead to even more problems over time. Sadly, these issues will probably not be addressed before its completion, if it ever reaches completion. 

The beach, and nearby where we camped. I highly recommend this place. 

Here are some morning photos from the rocks at the beach near Uhmlanga, in Durba, South Africa. This was a short walk from one of the places we stayed in Durban.

These photos are a combination of wildlife from the estuary as well as the nearby game reserve. The photo above is also a game called "find the crocodiles" - hint: there are 13. The bird resembles a Bald Eagle and is an African Fish Eagle, and there is also an enormous pelican on the right side of the photo. We did a combination of driving and walking safari and for not expecting to see any wildlife in Africa for some time we were quite pleased to get out into the wildlife so soon after arriving in South Africa. 

After leaving the arid heat of North Africa and being greeted by what the locals were calling a monsoon that had lasted all day, we soon had a chance to go with our phenomenal host Paulo the visit the La Lucia estuary a few hours from Durban. Aside from some chance to view crocs and hippos in the estuary, we also had our first chance to visit a real live African game reserve. Those pictures will go up in the next post, bandwidth permitting :)

While in South Africa we had an opportunity to do some volunteer work and also get some photos with the Salvation Army thanks to our new friend Arlene, who we met in Durban. Cato translates to Zulu as "poor," which it is without any doubt. Cato Manor was originally built for the massive Indian servant population in Durban (and South Africa in general), but there was a nasty conflict in the 80's and the Indians were pushed out. 
There is government money being spent on housing projects in places like Cato Manor (called townships), but unfortunately the designs are poor and the timetable much delayed. I also took some photos of some of the houses in construction and I'll post those later to show what I mean. Despite the extreme poverty and high percentage of AIDS cases, the people welcomed food and the children enjoyed seeing their photos, many of them for the first time. 
Extremely rich and extremely poor South Africans live in very close proximity to each other, with affluent living on just the next rise past Cato Manor. Furthermore, due to the recent collapse of Apartheid and more recently the changes made by the current President, racial prejudice is strong. Hopefully as time separates South Africa's current residents from the mistakes of the past they can coexist as equals. I also hope much more money is spent on programs such as this to give these children an opportunity to get out of Cato Manor and take advantage of all the great things South Africa has to offer. 

Here are a couple pictures of me, and what I've been up to. These are pictures taken by Lauren up at Cato Manor in Durban. I don't photography myself much, usually due to the length of my arms and being scared of my own reflection. This is during a Salvation Army soup delivery to this community and some shooting to effect change in a current  project constructing houses in this village. More on that later, and more photos, though you can read more about it on Lauren's blog. Special thanks to Arlene for helping us out with this and everything in Durban!